View full sizeMichael Lloyd/The OregonianRev. Jesse Jackson visited Portland Tuesday to speak with local leaders about the Aaron Campbell shooting. Rev. Jesse Jackson criticized city officials' decision to allow a Portland police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man last month to return to work today, despite his request to reconsider.

"The calculation was a political one," Jackson said in a phone interview with The Oregonian. "It was not a wise one."

Jackson, the longtime human and civil rights activist, had met with Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Dan Saltzman on Tuesday, telling them that allowing Officer Ronald Frashour to return to work so soon after the Jan. 29 shooting-death of Aaron M. Campbell was "insulting." Frashour shot Campbell in the back after the unarmed man, despondent over the death of his younger brother, had moments before left his apartment with his hands behind his head.

Jackson later addressed more than 1,200 people at Maranatha Church in a rally that called on people to nonviolently protest Frashour's return to work and has since left Portland.

Saltzman on Tuesday evening had said he would consider Jackson's request, though added that he wouldn't promise a decision on Wednesday, Frashour's first day back in a new assignment in the East Precinct's neighborhood response team.

Jackson, repeating themes from the previous night, said that "people of good will" of all races as well as Portland police officers need to publicly stand up and show that Frashour's actions are not representative of Portland or of its police force. (A few hundred people today protested Frashour's return and several marched on to City Hall where they confronted the mayor.)

"Make this a matter of conscience, a matter of right and wrong and not just a matter of black and white," Jackson said.

Jackson said Adams and Saltzman seemed to appreciate his frustrations over the lack of minority representation in the police and fire departments and higher-than-average unemployment in the black population than in the city as a whole.

Of 969 sworn Portland Police Bureau employees, only 33 people, or 3.4 percent are black, according to bureau figures.

Of 675 Portland Fire sworn personnel, only 25 people or 3.7 percent, are black.

The city council and other leaders need to do more, Jackson said, adding that “white political leaders must say this does not represent Portland.” All five members of the Portland City Council are white.

"We really want due process," he said. It would be premature to fire Frashour, Jackson said, but it is also too soon to bring him back to work.

The Campbell shooting, he said, is part of a local and national trend of police shootings or beatings of unarmed black and Latino people, and he is asking the House Judiciary Committee and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the shooting. But he urged Portlanders to use the shooting as an opportunity to create a "nonviolent coalition of conscience" that seeks to level the playing field.